I put in the book order yesterday, and there’s all sorts of problems with getting a textbook from Point A to Point B. Long story short, it’s an inefficient process, expensive, and somebody eventually loses money.
One thing that was rather telling was that the bookseller told me that one particular textbook (a middle school history reader, in print for over 10 years, ~200 pages) was now being sold for $75 new. She said that prices have been going up recently because the publisher was bought out.
I suspect all books are seeing lower volume sales, partly because of the economy, but also because of ebooks. Soon, I think even textbooks will be mostly electronic.
So, I’m thinking: what will be fallout? Will traditional textbooks disappear? How will classes be affected?
I honestly hope so. I don’t see it being that big a change in classes themselves, as a true eBook is exactly the same as a regular book. The thing that would change classes is if they become interactive in some form.
The eBooks will be cheaper to produce, but I suspect the sales prices will remain comparable (and $75 for a textbook is cheap nowadays. All of mine were over $100 unless the teacher got something that wasn’t a normal textbook or rolled their own.) Heck, once regular textbooks are no longer available, you’d no longer have an option.
Ooh. I thought of a difference: How do they handle used eBooks? It won’t change the classes themselves much, but students will feel the pinch if they can’t get an older version of the work. And piracy may become popular if they don’t switch to a subscription model, payed not by the students, but the college itself who then adds the price to tuition, thus allowing them to tout them as “free”, like the various online research companies and online class software.
This is what it was like with the book for a Physics class I took a couple semesters ago. You could still get a print copy of the book if you wanted, but you had to buy the ebook/supplement that came with it from a company called Wiley Plus (which also included the full text).
Homework was assigned through WileyPlus, and the problems (in addition to being generated with random numbers so no two students have the same answers) were interactive, offering hints and links to relevant portions of the text for that particular problem. You got instant feedback on whether you were right or wrong when you submit an answer, and after so many wrong answers it shows the solution. (the instructor can change the settings on this option - how many answers before the solution pops up, if it should pop up at all, and if you get partial credit at that point)
It was really cool and it’s definitely the future for math and science-based classes. I think other types of classes will be slower to adopt ebook-only formats but it’s inevitable at some point.
I love ebooks but the reason I still buy the physical book in most instances is that I can resell it at the end of the semester and recoup almost all of my initial investment (on half.com, not to the campus store, and also assuming a new edition didn’t come out that semester). Ebooks have no resale value, unfortunately, but pirating is probably going to become a big issue.
Initially, I’d expect substantial and expansive piracy, possibly leading to the partnering of textbook publishers with institutions, the massive standardization of textbooks and deterioration of the textbook market, and the expanded use of open source textbooks.
College students are poor, tech-savvy, and young, all of which means they’re more likely to pirate. In addition, they don’t particularly value the textbook. They might need it for the class, but they’re not going to want to display it on their bookshelves, or weigh as highly a moral obligation to support the creators. It wouldn’t surprise me if fewer than 20% of students enrolled in a class where the text is available electronically actually purchase it within a few years.
I expect that the textbook publishers will find a way to partner with colleges so that the college pays the costs, and the text is provided free of charge to students (much like the way that many of the music companies tried to do. Of course, now that the colleges are actually bearing the costs of textbooks, there will be financial pressure on professors to select cheaper books, which will further drive down the revenues of textbook publishers and force them to consolidate and standardize. I’d also expect to see more professors and universities writing their own textbooks to avoid the cost, and further use of open source textbooks.